Holtz Communications + Technology

It’s not the most interesting reading you’ll do this week, but it’s intriguing nonetheless. Ari Soglin, whose byline lists him as “Citizen Journalist,” contributed coverage of the Benecia (California) School Board meeting last night via blog. The report, which appears at BeneciaNews.com, includes comments from readers.

The item, which begins at the end (where the first post appears), notes, “We’re trying something different tonight: The Benicia…

We keep hearing how incredibly influential blogs are. But is it all blogs, or just the few that attract enough readership to make a difference? This is one of the issues explored by Foreign Policy in an extensive article on the impact of blogs on (what else?) foreign policy. The article, “Web of Influence”, explores the degree to which blogs drive media and…

I was supposed to fly to Chicago tomorrow for a speaking engagement on Wednesday. Yesterday, however, while my wife and I took a break from holiday shopping and dined at a mall restaurant, my cell phone began vibrating. Ralph Gaillard, the conference organizer for Ragan Communications’ 2004 Web Content Management Conference, was in a bind. A speaker set to do three…

The city of Philadelphia wants to offer low-cost WiFi service to its residents. ‘We looked at it as a way to be a city, literally, of the 21st century,’’ according to Barbara Grant, a spokeswoman for Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street. ‘‘We wanted to bridge the digital divide for residents who wouldn’t have access to the Internet, particularly schoolchildren.’‘

Sounds like a politician to be proud of, doesn’t it? And…

Political blogs have been theorizing since the November 2 election that the vote was hijacked, that election fraud was rampant. All kinds of conspiracy theories, fueled by supposed evidence, has been sweeping through the Web. And that’s okay, according to New York Times reporter Tom Zeller Jr. In a Times article, Zeller notes:

...while the widely read universe of Web logs was…

Online Journalism Review’s Mark Glaser has a thoughtful piece on the impact election day is having on bloggers and their credibility. Glaser focuses on the early reporting of exit polls, which turned out to be inaccurate, but also notes that many blogs cracked under the strain of unprecedented traffic. Mainstream media, Glaser notes, wound up looking good by withholding exit poll…